The orchestra, which is deep in deficit, has found sponsors for a European tour with its music director Manfred Honeck and the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter.

 

Here’s the schedule:

Monday, August 28 Rheingau festival in Wiesbaden, Germany, with Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin.
Tuesday, August 29 Salzburg festival, with Mutter
Thursday, August 31 Grafenegg festival, with baritone Matthias Goerne
Friday, September 1 Grafenegg, Austria, with Rainer Honeck (the conductor’s brother)
TBA London, England, with Anne-Sophie Mutter (presumably the BBC Proms)
Wednesday, September 6 Lucerne festival with Anne-Sophie Mutter
Thursday, September 7 George Enescu festival in Bucharest, with Goerne
Friday, September 8 George Enescu Festival in Bucharest, with Mutter

The incoming music director of the New York Philharmonic has pulled out of March concerts with the National Symphony in Washington.

He seems to have left the orch in a bit of  pickle. They have called in the British baton Mark Wigglesworth, who has not conducted in DC since 2002. Like most things in Washington these days, you can believe what you choose.

Here’s the press release: (WASHINGTON)—Conductor Mark Wigglesworth, who last appeared with the NSO in 2002, will lead the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) in its subscription programs on March 2–4, 2017, with violinist Simone Lamsma. He replaces guest conductor Jaap van Zweden, who has withdrawn for family reasons. The program—Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and Brahms’s Symphony No. 2—remains the same. These performances mark Lamsma’s debut with the NSO.

The orchestra has taken on an Interim Director of Artistic Planning to cover for Ed Yim, who has quit along with several others.

The new acting v-p is Gregg Gleaser, Director of Artistic Planning for the San Francisco Symphony from 1991-2011, and since then master of his own business, GleasnerMusic, which offers ‘leadership and guidance to orchestras, festivals, and performing arts organizations’.

The NY Phil sure need a lot of leadership and guidance, and fast.

Shutting the file on his recent erotic turbulence, the German violinist has been awarded the Frankfurter Musikpreis for 2017, a gift worth 15,000 Euros.

The prize is cross-generic, as you can see from the winners below.

It has consistently bypassed the leading German violinists – Mutter, Faust, Fischer, Tetzlaff, Zimmermann.

Maybe they don’t like the violin much in Frankfurt.

Past winners:

2017 David Garrett, Violinist
2016 Al Jarreau, Sänger und Songautor
2015 Peter Sadlo, Schlagzeuger
2014 Ernie Watts, Saxophonist
2013 Marie-Luise Neunecker, Hornistin und Instrumentalpädagogin
2012 John McLaughlin, Gitarrist und Komponist
2011 Anne Sofie von Otter, Mezzo-Sopranistin
2010 Keith Emerson, Keyboarder und Komponist
2009 Dr. José Antonio Abreu, Dirigent, Komponist und Mentor
2008 Paquito D’Rivera, Saxophonist, Klarinettist, Komponist
2007 Peter Eötvös, Dirigent, Komponist und Lehrer
2006 Peter Gabriel, Pop-/Rockmusiker
2005 György Ligeti, Komponist
2004 Udo Lindenberg, Deutsch-Rocker und Pop-Dichter
2003 Walter Levin, Violinist
2002 –
2001 Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Sänger
2000 Klaus Doldinger, Saxophonist
1999 Michael Gielen, Dirigent und Komponist
1998 Peter Herbolzheimer, Arrangeur/Interpret/Komponist
1997 Hans Zender, Komponist und Dirigent
1996 Wolfgang Niedecken, Sänger und Songwriter
1995 Tabea Zimmermann, Bratscherin
1994 Brian Eno, Musiker und Klangkünstler
1993 Harry Kupfer, Regisseur
1992 Georg Solti, Dirigent
1991 Aribert Reiman, Komponist
1990 Chick Corea, Jazz-Pianist
1989 Ludwig Güttler, Trompeter
1988 Heinz Holliger, Oboist
1987 Carl Dahlhaus, Musikwissenschaftler
1986 Albert Mangelsdorff, Jazz-Posaunist
1985 Brigitte Fassbaender, Kammersängerin
1984 Alfred Brendel, Pianist
1983 Edgar Krapp, Organist
1982 Gidon Kremer, Geiger

We have seen a letter from the great conductor to someone asking for lessons.

Dated 29 June 1999, here’s what Kleiber advises:

Dear

I never do any teaching! (And I hardly conduct anywhere any more).

Judging by your CD, you aren’t a beginner by any means. Orchestras* will teach you all that you’re capable of learning about conducting.

Try as coach in some opera company in the US. When the conductor falls sick, there’s a chance to take over a performance. If you don’t blow it, you’re in. Symphonies can wait. Symphonic music means mainly rehearsal. Opera means technique, in the broader sense of the word. With a good technique, you can forget technique. It’s like with manners. If you know how to behave, you can misbehave. That’s fun! (At least, that’s my theory).

Good luck!

Yours sincerely

 

Carlos Kleiber

*And watching conductors – preferably lousy ones – at work. (They’re everywhere!)

PS This letter is all I can do for you. OK?

 

Two blasts from a lacerating Bachtrack interview with the sought-after Australian Heldentenor. 

On English National Opera:

‘They’ve got a new artistic director calling Janáček fringe repertoire. It’s the rep that’s built that house’s reputation! Jenůfa and Káťa Kabanová – that’s the stuff that ENO does better than the Royal Opera.

‘I love ENO so much but what’s their plan? I don’t think Cressida Pollock is malevolent but I think she’s out of her depth. And I firmly believe that, as personable and as engaging as Daniel Kramer is, he should not be running that company. He’s the wrong man for the job. Not only is he not experienced but the only times he’s been in something genuinely large scale, it fell over. There’s a level at which he’s also irretrievably American and all the optimism on the planet won’t actually get you over the line if the product is poor. In Tristan there were so many ideas, but the amount of time it took to shed those ideas when it was clear they weren’t going to work took way too long. The artistic director of the company can’t put their foot in their mouth that often and get away with it. I think it’s a shame because he’s a personable guy who totally means well, but I don’t think he has any clue long term what ENO means to its audience and that audience has been slowly but surely bleeding away.’

You are one of the most celebrated Australian opera singers, yet I look at our Opera Australia listings and you’re not there.

‘No sir, I’m not. How many times can you do Gale Edwards’ Bohème? Four times in six seasons? And it’s not selling any more. The subscribers aren’t going back because they’re getting the same stuff over and over and over again. Okay, they’ve increased ticket sales but they’ve increased ticket sales to My Fair Lady. I understand that it’s paying the bills and that’s terrific but I have a massive problem with any opera company that’s collecting government subsidy for something that’s commerically successful. Are they giving that part of their subsidy back? Not likely! That’s a travesty.

‘There’s no way they can justify laying off this wonderful ensemble of singers who form the absolute heart and soul and guts of the company, put them all on part-time contracts, then fly in every second-rate singer from anywhere to sing stuff when we’ve got people in Australia who sing those roles just as well.’

Full interview here.

 

In an age of braggadocious Trumpery, it is incumbent upon the arts to offer refuge, enlightenment and distraction.

The Met’s new season – five new productions, three of them weary warhorses – offers scant relief.

Tosca and Norma are being freshened up by the workmanlike David McVicar, almost half the new shows in one pair of hands.

Cosi imports a Broadway star, Kelli O’Hara, to play Despina.

Massenet’s Cendrillon, never staged before at the Met, is a star vehicle for Joyce DiDonato.

And Thomas Ades conducts his own Exterminating Angel.

Plus 21 revivals.

‘It’s a season of repertory favourites and stimulating rarities, with something for neophytes and aficionados alike, said general manager Peter Gelb.

No wonder the Met plays one-third empty.

Like Donald J. Trump, Gelb still believes most of the people can be fooled most of the time.

The Blue Danube Waltz – originally titled Donauwalzer – was first heard 150 years ago, on 15 February 1867.

The performance was not within the fashionable Ring but in the Leopoldstadt, the second district, heavily populated by Jewish immigrants and known as Matzah Island. Johann Strauss himself had a Jewish great-grandfather.

The waltz was premiered by the Wiener Männergesangsverein in the premises of a swimming pool, the Dianabad, that doubled at nights as a concert hall.

At an anniversary ceremony on the site of the former pool, the mayor of Leopoldstadt, Uschi Lichtenegger, spoke of the Jewish roots of the Strauss family and the efforts the Nazis made to cover them up.

Jennifer Ross, leader of the second violins in the Pittsburgh Symphony for almost 20 years, has resigned.

She has moved to Wyoming to seek ‘a change of pace’.

Pittsburgh now has three principal vacancies: concertmaster, principal seconds and timps. Two of those seats have been open since 2015. No-one has been racing to make an appointment, before or after a bitter lock-out.

It’s the orchestra’s management that needs a change of pace.

Since the NY Times did not bother to review the Met’s late replacement for Elvira, here’s Zeal NYC’s report:

Camarena’s Arturo was every bit as good as expected, but Yende’s Elvira was spectacular in every way. She had only sung the role once before, in a non-traditional production last year in Zurich. It was a triumph for her, and Tuesday night’s performance, in a staging that could not possibly have been more different, has to count as another.

As singing, it was not perfect—Yende has something of a beat in her voice that takes a little getting used to, and she sometimes merged with the orchestra when she should have been floating above it—but as musical expression, it was peerless, and as a progressive revelation of character, it was meticulously thought-out and deeply convincing. Her acting was psychologically acute…

Read the full review here.

 

 

photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

Kiev is due to host the 2017 Eurovision Song contest.

Or not, as the case may be.

When the most absurd of media events meets the most corrupt of regimes, anything can happen.

The BBC reports that Ukraine has no-one in place at the moment to manage the event.

Russia is rubbing its hands.

(Ukraine won the last contest with an overtly political song.)

Michael Naura, who died on Monday, was regarded as Germany’s foremost jazz pianist of the post-War era, almost a national institution.

From 1971 to 1999 he was head of the jazz division of the state broadcaster, NDR.